Leaders of some of England’s biggest councils have warned that the government’s approach to local-authority reorganisation is now posing “significant risks” to core services.
In late 2024, then-deputy prime minister Angela Rayner set out plans to scrap two-tier local government in parts of England that still have it, inviting areas covered by both county and district councils to work up plans for change.
At the time it was suggested that the creation of new unitary authorities, like those covering cities such as Sheffield and Birmingham – or historic counties such as Wiltshire and Shropshire, would save money and improve accountability.
But this week lobby group the County Councils Network has warned that the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s recently-confirmed plans for reorganisation in four two-tier areas are at odds with the original brief for reorganisation.
Rayner’s English Devolution white paper suggested that county and district councils should be replaced by new unitaries for populations in the region of 500,000. However the County Councils Network says MHCLG’s proposals for Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk “depart from the government’s own criteria on scale, sustainability and service resilience” without evidence to justify the decision.
It says that plans to create 15 new unitary councils in the four areas “have set in train an experimental approach to reorganisation that bears all the hallmarks of a set of short-term political choices, not a coherent or consistent application of the government’s own framework”.
The network said that in each county ministers opted for the “most radical” reorganisation plan, with “complex changes to existing boundaries” required in three of the areas. Reorganisation in those areas is due to go live from April 2028.
In its letter to MHCLG and No.10, the group says the “scale of fragmentation” proposed and an “enormously ambitious” timetable for delivery are prompting serious concerns from senior staff. At the forefront of them is the capacity to deliver safe and legal services in compliance with the timetable envisaged.
CCN adds: “The creation of more undersized, fragmented unitary authorities will weaken economies of scale, increase administrative overheads, and place additional strain at a time when councils already face severe financial challenges and competing service pressures. It will jeopardise the integrity of essential services, particularly adult and children’s social care. Critically, it will render implementation timescales wholly unachievable and require hundreds of millions of central government funding to support transition.”
As part of current two-tier arrangements, children’s social services and adult social services are provided at county level. So replacement of a county with three or more unitary authorities could result in the establishment of new teams in each new authority.
The CCN letter, which includes the leaders of Essex County Council and Hampshire County Council among its signatories, says fears over service quality and financial impact are practical, rather than theoretical.
“These are not abstract concerns,” the letter states. “They represent a direct threat to vulnerable residents, to the sustainability of new councils, and to the deliverability of the government’s welcome reforms to children’s services and special educational needs and disabilities in large swathes of the country.”
Reorganisation plans for a further 16 county council areas are due to be confirmed by MHCLG in the coming months.
CCN says that if ministers opt for “large-scale fragmentation and complex boundary change” in those areas, the result will be “a pattern of reform that is more costly, less stable and less effective than the current two-tier system”.
An MHCLG spokesperson disputed the basis for the network’s concerns.
“We don’t recognise this analysis,” they said. “In fact, local government reorganisation will save taxpayers’ money by streamlining services and boosting regional growth so we can put more cash in peoples’ pockets.
“Our plans will make public services like social care work better for local people, alongside speeding up the construction of vital new homes and infrastructure.”
The current wave of local government reorganisation has prioritised Surrey, where the county council and its 11 districts will be abolished and replaced with two unitary authorities in April next year.
Among the councils breing scrapped are Woking BC and Spelthorne BC, both of which have been the subject of recent government intervention because of debt levels.